chronicles of an igorot in australia. a photoblog in parts, this is intended as a diary, travelogue, memoir, journal, palimpsest, igorot blog, accounts of misadventures, running battles or whatever it turns out to be. there might be souls out there with common interests. do post a comment.

Gadget

Monday, 29 December 2014

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island - Walt Disney

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is one of the greatest public intellectuals.

Sam Harris: Lying. "Lying is the royal road to chaos."

Triumph and Demise: The Broken Promise of a Labor Generation. A detailed account of Labor in power during 2007-2013 by Paul Kelly.

Diary of a Foreign Minister. Six years after leaving as the longest-serving Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr was drafted back by the Labor Party to serve as Foreign Minister of Australia. This is his diary over the 18 months he served in the post.

The Good Fight by Wayne Swan. A very personal and subjective account of his tenure as treasurer of Australia for six years under two prime ministers (Rudd and Gillard) during the GFC recession.

"The Politics Book" a reference for students of politics and government.

Is That a Fact? In this book the ABC Fact Check team, headed by John Barron, pull together the facts on over one hundred questions.

In The Science of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, the physicist who assisted on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, shows that the events and visuals in the movie are grounded in real science.

Arundhati Roy. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. The book examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation. From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Perhaps the book should also be called - Capitalism: A Success Story.

John lanier. You Are Not a Gadget. Lanier criticizes the 'hive mind' (wisdom of the crowd) as a form of "Digital Maoism", arguing that Web 2.0 developments have retarded progress and innovation and glorified the collective at the expense of the individual.
And in Who Owns the Future?, Lanier posits that the middle class is increasingly disenfranchised from online economies where firms can accrue large amounts of data at virtually no cost. Lanier calls these firms “Siren Servers,” alluding to the Sirens of Ulysses.

Ulysses is Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. The book recounts the great wandering of Odysseus during his ten-year voyage back home to Ithaca, after the Trojan War.
The "Song of Roland" is an epic story of war in the time of Charlemagne.

James Kelman. You have to be careful in the land of the free is a book about post 9/11 America where our hero Jerry is wrenched by worry about his obligation and legacy: “Who was that auld'' bloke ''that lived in the States? Which one? Him that didnay come hame to visit his poor auld maw! Aw that bastard Jerry! This is the obligation I am talking about.'' His situation is made worse by getting ‘red’carded and because he's Scottish, ‘obviously’ foreign to Americans. Kelman should have got Jeremiah to thank his lucky stars that he’s not Asian or Latin or that his name is not Irmiya Samran.

David kinney. Dylanologists

Hugh Lunn. The Big Book of Lunn is two books in one - about growing up in Australia.

Lee Child. The Persuader
Ian Rankin. Saints of the shadow bible
James Sheehan. The lawyer’s lawyer

Simon Winchester. The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through the remarkable life and extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, a brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China.